Shutdowns and Furloughs and Cuts, Oh My!

Can you spot what’s missing in this NYT article? 

But his latest budget proposal made clear that California has not emerged from what has proved to be the most difficult and destructive fiscal storm in its history. Even if voters approve the taxes Mr. Brown proposed as part of the $92 billion budget for 2012 — which is far from certain — this budget still contains a new round of $4.2 billion in cuts, mainly to welfare and home health care. Last year, the state imposed over $5 billion in spending cuts.
…
If not, Mr. Brown’s budget includes cuts that would automatically go into effect. They would include $4.8 billion for public schools and community colleges. Higher education, already blistered by cuts over the past five years, would face another $400 million decrease. California courts would be reduced by $125 million, potentially forcing them to close three days a month, and spending would be trimmed for firefighting in public forests.

Blistered?  Someone’s thesaurus is running thin. 

So, after all this severe cutting and destruction and blistering, that budget must be a lot smaller, right?  Uh, no, actually they’re increasing spending by 7%, from $86.5B to $92.6B.  Oddly enough, actual expenditure numbers and percentages for comparison didn’t make it into the NYT piece.  Maybe they needed the room for lurid adjectives.

And how awful can this really be for CA universities, in particular?  Tuition and fees have been increased 400% since 2001, which only seems crazy until you realize they’re buying each teacher a new Ferrari every year (oddly we don’t hear a lot about “Occupy UCLA” which I suppose is a credit to Gramsci — students are so befuddled after four plus years of leftism, they’re actually protesting the people who gave them the loans rather than the people who took their money).

And why, why, why in God’s name would they close anything for some small number of days?  Have they never heard of fixed costs? Do they not understand taxes are paid to provide services?  And services certainly can be provided at those expenditure levels, it’s not like they weren’t this year when they spent 7% less, or in 2010 when they spent $91.4B.  If a major state department can’t operate at full capacity even on their lackadaisical government calendar with its ten extra holidays, that department should just be closed entirely on the basis of inefficiency.

This smacks of statist extortion: pay us more, or we’ll turn off the lights at school.  It will be a tragedy for the children, we really don’t want to, but the $50 we save on electricity is really, really necessary, because some people won’t accept higher taxes…